Modern electronic calendaring systems allow users to manage calendar data such as meetings, appointments, holidays, personal time, and the like via an electronic calendar user interface in a manner similar to managing such data in a manual calendar except with all the added efficiencies expected from electronic systems such as the ability to easily enter and edit data and the ability to review data in a variety of different views, for example, daily views, weekly views, etc. One particular benefit of electronic calendaring systems is the ability to schedule meetings with one or more attendees and/or assets (e.g., conference rooms, video teleconference equipment, and the like) based on free or busy data (availability data) that may be retrieved for desired meeting attendees and/or assets before scheduling is performed. For example, if a meeting organizer desires to set up a meeting with three attendees in a given conference room, the organizer may request data as to when the desired attendees and conference room are available.
According to prior methods and systems, availability data for potential attendees (for example, employees of a given organization) and/or availability data for organization assets (for example, conference rooms, video teleconference equipment, etc.) is published on a periodic basis to one or more public data folders for access by meeting organizers' calendaring applications. Unfortunately, with such methods and systems, the free/busy (availability) data for potential attendees and/or potential assets is only as good as the last publication of data to the public data folders. Thus, the availability data is often out of date at the time a meeting organizer schedules a meeting. If the organizer schedules a meeting during a period in which the availability data is out of date, the meeting may be scheduled based on erroneous availability data for one or more attendees or assets. As a result, the meeting may not be attended by one or more persons, and a desired asset may be in use by another party during the scheduled meeting. Additionally, with such systems, the ability to retrieve availability data is typically restricted to relatively short periods into the future, and potential attendees have very little control over who may retrieve their availability data.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.